European Economic Crisis Highlights an Increasingly Important Reason to Oppose Gun Control

About a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals.

What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part of the conference was learning – as part of casual conversation during breaks, meals, and other socializing time – how many rich people are planning for the eventual collapse of European society.

Not stagnation. Not gradual decline. Collapse.

As in riots, social disarray, plundering, and chaos. A non-trivial number of these people think the rioting in places such as Greece and England is just the tip of the iceberg, and they have plans – if bad things begin to happen – to escape to jurisdictions ranging from Australia to Costa Rica (several of them remarked that they no longer see the U.S. as a good long-run refuge).

This was rather sobering. I’ve never been an optimist about Europe’s future, as I explain here and here, but is the situation really this bad?

British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible. Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis. The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way. …Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest. …Diplomats have also been told to prepare to help tens of thousands of British citizens in eurozone countries with the consequences of a financial collapse that would leave them unable to access bank accounts or even withdraw cash. …Analysts at UBS, an investment bank earlier this year warned that the most extreme consequences of a break-up include risks to basic property rights and the threat of civil disorder. “When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Let’s think about what this means, and we’ll start with an assumption that European politicians won’t follow my sage advice and that they’ll instead continue to kick the can down the road – thus making the debt bubble even bigger and creating the conditions for a nasty collapse.

I’ve learned over the years that things are usually never as bad as they seem (or as good as they seem), so I don’t expect that a nightmare situation will materialize, but I certainly can understand why wealthy people have contingency plans to escape.

But what about the rest of us? We don’t have property overseas and we don’t have private jets, so what’s our insurance policy?

Part of the answer is to have the ability to protect ourselves and our families. As explained here, firearms are the ultimate guarantor of civilization.

In my discussions and debates about this issue, I’ve traditionally relied on these four arguments:

2. The presumption of liberty. It’s sometimes said that everything that isn’t expressly forbidden is allowed in the United States, whereas in Europe it’s the other way around, with everything forbidden unless explicitly permitted. This certainly seems to be the case for guns, with most European governments prohibiting firearms ownership for the vast majority of people.

3. Personal protection against crime. As the first image in this post powerfully illustrates, it doesn’t really matter if cops are only a few minutes away when a person only has a few seconds to protect against danger. And since the evidence is overwhelming that gun ownership reduces crime, this is a powerful argument for the Second Amendment.

4. Ability to resist government oppression. Totalitarian governments invariably seek to disarm people, as this poster indicates. And with the majority of the world still living in nations that are not free, private gun ownership is at least a potential limit on thuggish governments.

But perhaps we now need to add a fifth reason:

5. Personal protection against social breakdown. If politicians destroy the economic system with too much debt and too much dependency, firearms will be the first and last line of defense against those who would plunder and pillage.

Here’s a thought experiment to drive the point home. If Europe does collapse, which people do you think will be in better shape to preserve civilization, the well-armed Swiss or the disarmed Brits?

I hope we never have to find out, but I know which society has a better chance of surviving.

I would submit another reason with elements of numbers 4 and 5, call it 4.5. The government doesn’t need to actively oppress disfavored groups, it can simply withdraw police protection, or just delay it, and let that group be routinely victimized. No obvious oppression to be protested, but the mission is accomplished just the same.

I find it misleading that so much significance, and blame, is attributed to such an inanimate thing as a currency – The Euro in this case.

The Euro is simply a currency, a medium of exchange. At most, the Euro, is just the messenger of Europe’s fundamental existential problem: Lack of competitiveness from an unmotivated population, which — while much more educated and capable than the AVERAGE American — faces the indolence promoting motivation levels of flat effort-reward curve.

After all, when it comes primarily to the currency, the ECB managed Euro, was a better overall governed currency than the US dollar (read “less managed”) – at least until the more recent purchases of sovereign debt by the ECB. The ECB’s intervention actions had traditionally been more limited to the narrow scope of price stability as opposed to the FED who engages in a host of macroeconomic gimmicks, more explicitly shifting wealth from one pile to the other, in the hopes of fooling people into wealth transfers… and hoping that they will not notice, will not take evasive action, will not mitigate the transfers through other actions, and… more importantly … will continue being fooled time and again into producing for an ever decreasing reward — or a reward that is retroactively trimmed via indirect redistributive central banking actions. That is, a reward trimmed by the macro-economic gimmicks of the FED to indirectly redistribute, serving vote buying politicians – and, of course indirectly, their appointed bureaucrats and central bank staff.

Of course, it is not that Europe’s politicians have not discovered the vote buying power of fiscal interventionism – they have always been further ahead of the US in this respect. It is that the Euro, being a young currency, had not yet been infected by all the interventionist mechanisms by which politicians would eventually and inevitably contaminate it. This transformation is happening now, with the ECB urged to make an almost overnight jump into FED style interventionism.

But in any case, a sounder European currency is inevitably small change against Europe’s core existential problem: A fundamentally low production / competitiveness, which is essentially the A-Z of prosperity. Without raw production — and the individual high motivation necessary to achieve it — there is nothing that economists and politicians can do to post-process wealth and create high living standards from five loaves and two fish – no matter what Paul Krugman may sell the more gullible.

But they keep selling the dream, and generation after generation people have bought it in Europe. A significant market for the same Cool-aid seems to have opened in the US.

Times have changed for the Western World and the THREE BILLION newly — even if only partially — economically awakened citizens of the Emerging World will, by virtue of their numbers, quickly dispatch into economic oblivion the less than one billion westerners who have — in utter and complete folly — rested their hopes for survival on the very mandatory collectivism now being rejected by the once comatose Emerging World. I’m baffled by the suicidal reaction of the Western World. Almost a case of spontaneous preprogrammed apoptosis is happening in the mind of the western voter.

I read an article just yesterday published in October in which Michelle Obama issued a slight warning to gun owners. If Obama is re-elected and the Supreme Courts balance of power is shifted, the 2nd Amendment will be in danger like never before. Four of the justices argue that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to own a firearm, nor does it protect our right to defend ourselves, our families, or our property.
I couldn’t agree with you more. The founding fathers were wise beyond their day and age. I’d much rather be Swiss than British. But overall, I want my gun and my America.

Brian: What you refer to has been named anarchotyranny, an extension of the very old political pattern of the upper and lower classes ganging up against the middle. Based on what Tony Blair said about his desire to destroy British rural culture, how much of their police protection he removed from rural and I heard other disfavored areas, and the resulting crime in those areas your concern is well founded.

Although it must be noted that effective self-defense was judicially nullified by the British courts in the ’50s, so even if the population was well armed it would ultimately do them little good.

Dirty Sex & Politics: I don’t particularly buy this, in the end I believe in our current system it comes down to raw political power. For example, long before the Supremes voted in 2008 on Heller (their first modern affirmation of the 2nd Amendment) the political battle had already been won. A string of catastrophic national defeats starting with the 1994 Congressional election to Gore’s loss in 2000 prompted the party at the national level to treat gun control as a new third rail of American politics. By 2008 the nationwide sweep of shall issue concealed carry licensing was complete except for Wisconsin this year/month (it had been held up for most of the decade by Democratic governor Jim Doyle) plus the “usual suspects”. Any bets on the federal courts as a general principle forcing those states into shall issue regimes? (However we might get some action on arbitrary/politicized granting of licenses.)

In the longer term this might change, but I don’t see it happening any time soon as the population continues to age and older folks continue to buy guns and get concealed carry licenses to compensate for their declining physical abilities. Plus it appears that the younger generation, perhaps encouraged by computer games, is increasing their participation in America’s gun culture.

One thing we do know is that to this very day, despite a history as President that’s arguably as good as G. W. Bush’s (e.g. both officially support(ed) an “assault weapons” ban), Obama been one of the most effective gun salesmen in US history. And of self-defense oriented guns, pure hunting guns have seen declines. Initially this was a fear of what he’d do in office, today … in addition to more people carrying concealed, its very likely a result of his shock and awe socialism and things like we’re seeing in Europe. Anecdotal evidence of a revival of something like the survivalism of the late ’70s and early ’80s would seem to support this (e.g. the very high demand for stored food).

To end and bring it back to replying to your point, I personally am not expecting that much from the Federal courts. Certainly none of the decisions to date have had much effect on the ground, e.g. this situation is nearly the same in D.C. (sure, if you jump through 10 hoops and pay a lot of money you can buy a gun, but you still can’t effectively and legally use it in self defense inside of your home). If Heller II is denied cert that’ll pretty much be the end of this effort, no matter who’s on the bench, and since federal judiciary’s history on “assault weapons” (which include most self-defense handguns) is just about uniformly negative I’m not very hopeful at the moment.

The problem with point #5 is that the government (that is even those who allow it’s citizens to own firearms) will try to disarm everyone just in time before the collapse. And law-abiding citizens follow the law. Gang members do not…

Mar Key: Maybe the notoriously law abiding Swiss will turn in their guns, but in the US that’ll instantly start a civil war. And one the government won’t win, especially since for the foreseeable future the military won’t sign onto such an effort as well as many state and local police forces. As I keep telling the (more radical) liberals, “You want a ‘revolution’? Well, remember that we own the bulk of the nation’s guns, numbering more than one per citizen.”

To give you an idea of the scope of the USA”s gun culture, we (including the police, who’ve significantly upped their game since Columbine and 9/11) buy 9 billion (sic) rounds of ammo every year.

GUNS, BEANS, and AMMO. Forget, history ergo your dead. Today any body
with a robot, simply “all your parts belong me”.
Consider 1000 rounds you have today. My 1001 robots will destroy any/all.
Wars of next day will be flying unman killers, walking unman killers.
Dead meat is of no use to a robot. Guess who cares not of the dead.
Survival is gun control with two hands, target it 700 feet – 1000 feet out.
Remember 2A , hide/bury your guns ammo and food. Two is one, three is two.
one gun means your lost and lose it all. Caches means more than three.
EFF militia of none, kommicalifornia.

Regarding owning guns in Costa Rica, I have a brother who lives there. The laws are very similar to “typical” American laws. Small written test to buy a gun, written test and 10 round range test to carry concealed with permit. No automatic weapons, no silencers, semi-auto rifles mag capacity limited to 10, etc….

David Ross: reading that page and several others on the web that are congruent with it suggest that their laws are “very similar to ‘typical’ American laws” only if you consider states like Massachusetts and New Jersey typical. The majority of the US, states and population, live under much better regimes where you e.g. don’t require a permit that includes a psychological exam to transport any assembled weapon outside of your residence.

And with a total registration system, one doesn’t have to wonder what would happen in a crisis or the like.

I applied for and received a carry permit on my first visit there. They held my gun in customs until I showed them my permit.

It took about one hour to get the permit: “psych” eval was just a simple conversation to demonstrate that I wasn’t totally looney; the written test was basic gun mechanics and safety rules; and the firing test was getting at least 7/10 rounds in the target.

I presented my license to customs and received my gun and ammo. In subsequent trips I have taken other guns with me. At customs I just announced that I had firearms with me, showed my permit and they took a casual glance at the guns — didn’t even turn them over to look for a serial number — and let me pass.

Their registration system is very similar to my home state’s (Colorado) but I found it very lax when it came to bringing guns into the country once I already had a permit.

While one always has to be concerned about how authorities are going to handle civilian guns in any type of “crisis,” I worry more about that here in our rapidly growing police state — America — than I do in Costa Rica.

Europeans are being realistic in making contingency plans to emigrate, but people in the USA should be doing the same thing. The country has accumulated unprecedented debt that cannot be repaid, a huge penalty that will burden income earners for at least the next 40 years. Alternatively, imagine living with a responsible government like Hong Kong, in a Mediterranean climate like California. Chile offers a combination of pleasant climate and fewer government burdens than many others. If you’re ready to shed the debt your government has imposed upon you, it is a good destination to consider.http://brophyworld.com/move-to-santiago-chile/

[…] Marie Antoinette eventually may have regretted her choice of words, but Europe’s current politicians are probably more clever and have contingency plans. When the you-know-what hits the fan and Europe descends into social disarray and economic chaos, ordinary people will be the ones at risk. […]